Florida State football: 5 great players who didn’t live up to the NFL hype

Bjoern Werner came to Tallahassee with limited experience in football. A native of Berlin, Germany, he didn’t start playing the game until his junior year of high school as an exchange student in Connecticut. However, he showed an instant nack on the defensive line, which is how he ended up being recruited by Jimbo Fisher and ultimately signing.

Despite his limited experience, Werner actually garnered playing time right away during his career with the Seminoles. He appeared in all 14 games as a true freshman and showed some potential as a disruptive presence with 3.5 sacks and six tackles for loss. Earning the starting job as a sophomore, he continued on the ascent with seven sacks and 11 tackles for loss.

Still continuing to improve as an overall inexperienced player in the game of football — at least in comparison to many players — Werner was a star in his junior season. The big defensive end had 13 sacks and 18 tackles for loss, which was good enough for him to be a unanimous First-Team All-American selection and to win ACC Defensive Player of the Year. It was also good enough to get him drafted in the first round, No. 24 overall, by the Indianapolis Colts in the 2013 draft.

In Indianapolis, however, Werner never realized the same level of success. Though the Colts gave him chances early on in his career with 28 games played and 16 starts over his first two seasons, he managed only 6.5 sacks over that time. And after his third season in the league in 2015, in which he only played 10 games, he was waived by Indy and has not played an NFL snap since.